


a quiet ride.

by mediocritea



Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Other, shit's fucked lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-10
Updated: 2018-09-10
Packaged: 2019-07-10 12:29:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15949370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mediocritea/pseuds/mediocritea
Summary: in which two former friends share a cigarette in a truck.





	a quiet ride.

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled: nick rye and the very bad, no good day.
> 
> for jesse.

     To the headstrong surprise of all present, the truck starts back up easily. Nick Rye, it seems, is a beacon for bad luck. It would have come as no surprise had it lent itself to the capture party surrounding him. Despite the raised rifles— barrels aimed point-blank, one at his knee, one at his chest, one at his shoulder, and one at his head— he tucks a slow hand into the pocket of his jeans. A pack of cigarettes, crumpled and creased from its spot in his back pocket. Nick raises his voice to be heard over the roaring engine, shoulders lax, eyes boring into John’s like it’s a regular Sunday afternoon. For all he’s learned by now? To John, it might be.

     “You want one?”

     Everything is personal between them. Everything. It always has been, it always will be. They’re the only two pilots worth jack _and_ shit in this county, and the smoking hulk that used to be Nick’s plane paints a splintered and ugly reminder of their friendship. Upon sight of the wreckage, it’s clear he got out easy. It isn’t the Carmina, though, and to Nick that’s all that matters. Still, there’s grease streaked against his left cheek, a tear in his shirt, and there’s bound to be bruises from the quick-drop stop of the parachute in the morning. They’ll blend and fuse with what will befall him in the bunker. Yeah, maybe easy wasn’t the right word. If Nick didn’t have someone to go home to, someone to miss, someone to miss _him_ — it might have been days before someone noticed the mess. Mid-summer, _everything_ is on fire. The smoke from his crash will coalesce with that of the amassing wildfires. It might have been days before he’d been reported missing. It’s a common thread of knowledge that Nick, for once, did not wish he knew. It might have left him with a bit more hope, not knowing, but the ease to his posture is leant to the solid reassurance of his girl waiting back home. Kim Rye would tear the world asunder to bring her boy back home. No, see, he’s got hope aplenty.

     Still slow, still careful, and still awaiting an answer, Nick taps out a cigarette and pulls out a lighter. They’ve done this before. It feels like a muscle memory when John sighs, a rolling movement that cants his head, a sideways angle.      **(** _john slings an arm around nick’s shoulders, a booming laugh rattling them both. nick’s hat is perched solidly atop john’s head, but he’s fairly confident, what with all that gel, that john’s hair will stay firmly intact. nick’s head lolls against john’s shoulder, pressing solidly into his ridiculous overcoat, a grin pulling his mouth wide._ **think kim’ll notice the smell?** _he asks. his breath is a mixture of cigarette smoke and whiskey, bound to spoil and sour by morning, and it makes john think of college. it pangs heavy and dry in his chest, the want, want, want of it all. john plucks the cigarette from between nick’s fingers, the closest to a lapse he’ll ever allow himself to approach since his undue rebirth, and bites it between his teeth. he sucks in a long, long drag, jostling nick’s hip with a bump of his own. on the exhale, smoke pillowing in the air around their heads, john replies._ **of course she will.     )**     Yes, sin must be exposed so that it may be absolved. There is no atonement without sin to atone _for_ , there is no gluttony without a vice to fall ill to. Something flickers, a pinpointed reluctance in the cornflower blue of John’s eyes. Its cause isn’t immediately clear, but there is a certain measure of suspicion towards its source. Greedy, greedy, greedy. Nick Rye, a sinner, a pox that has creeped into the beat, beat, _buh-bump_ of his heart. He’d been something quite dear. He could be, again. Atonement leaves no man unsaved. Baptism leaves no man un-reborn.

     The notion settles, lain bare in the dry Montana air between them.

     And, to his credit, John hesitates.

     Then a cultist makes move to step forward, lifting the butt of their rifle by a hair’s breadth. They halt only at the rise of John’s hand, a movement that turns and merges into a slow beckoning, a full extension of his arm towards Nick. His chin dips, head inclining. John’s always had trouble saying no, but it’s never mattered in a way quite as specific as this. Light as a feather, the cigarette Nick gives him weighs down his palm like sin in solid form. In a way, it is. Gluttony, all that. John pinches his between his fingers, between the thumb and two forefingers of his left hand, rising up to settle it between his lips. Nick steps forward, further, tracked by the watchful eye of John’s followers. _His_ chosen. He drags his thumb against the sparkwheel, lighting it. When the end of his cigarette catches and comes to light, the tobacco John pulls is sweet and heavy in his lungs. A gray stream of smoke curls out from between his teeth. It hangs as heavy as the silence that bleeds between them. It strings tight, tight, tighter, unblinkingly, until John jerks a head towards the truck. As a cultist opens one of the doors, another snatches Nick by the arm, shoving him towards the cab of the truck, punctuated by a sharp, surprised curse. “ _Jesus_ — I’m going, I’m going!” He supposes, all things considered, it’s a good thing John got first toke. It’d have been a damn shame to waste it.

     Nick finds another cultist waiting in the middle of the seat, rifle between her knees, a pistol settled on her knee beneath her hand. The door slams with a force that might have shattered the window had it not been rolled down already. Nick flinches at the sudden sight of John’s head ducking in close. The unbidden severity of his reaction prompts an ugly smile; faint, at least, but too amused by half. John’s forearms settle against the frame, looming. Nick opens his mouth, half-expecting John to lash out — but all he does is offer the cigarette. At that, the other half to him expects the embers to be put out on his arm, on his cheek, into the skin. But all John does is give it to him, pushing off, away, to walk around to the other side of the cab.

     John slides into the far seat, pushing against the woman sat between them in a way that shoves Nick against his door. There’s barely enough room to fit them comfortably, and John seems to be fully aware of the fact. The door shuts, and John reaches through the open window to smack a hand against the roof of the truck. The rest of his crew piles into the bed.

     “Let’s _go_.”

     The engines rev, tires spitting dirt as they begin their journey, and John reaches across to steal away the cigarette back from Nick. It’s just one more thing to add to the ever-growing list.      **(**      _one day, kim is at her mother’s. it’s an afternoon turned evening turned dinner turned impromptu sleepover. she’d called and said she’d be back by morning. the town has been getting weirder by the day. folks gone missing around the far edges, wildlife all spooked. fuck, if kim doesn’t deserve a little breather, he doesn’t know what. nick comes home, bone-tired, beat half to death by the length of his day. he tosses his keys into the bowl by the door. he  bends down, much to the protest of his stubbornly aging joints, to untie his boots, setting them off carefully to the side. everything has its place in the rye household. everything has its spot. everything is accounted for, no matter how small the detail. it’s funny, then, in an awful way, the irony— the indignity!— that strikes his newest loss. last week, it’d been the pizza cutter. week before that, it’d been thirteen spoons, two knives, three packages of baby diapers, and one dining room chair. the rhyme and its reason is lost on him, but the perpetrator reads heavy handed. obvious. he wouldn’t have been surprised to spot john’s graffiti on the outside of his home. but, no, the house remains otherwise untouched. this time, it’s the armchair by the television. nick’s furious shout spills out the windows and echoes into the night_.      **)**

     The truck is silent save for the choral hymns spilling softly from the radio. It’s Jacob’s song. The bass of the drum thrums heavily despite its hush. It’s ten minutes before they hit what passes for a proper road in the county, and, by then, the songs have shifted to the refrain of one of Faith’s songs. This version is softer, gentler, somehow. It does nothing to soothe the tension in the cab. Nick shoots John a glance past the cultist that sits silent and comfortable between them. It is a subtle thing that rides the line between hope and trepidation, something that aches, something that _hurts_ him, at his core, to sit so openly. It is a bleeding heart wound in his chest left bare, his weakness for John to carve his skewered vision of benediction into.

     “Think you might let me go?”

     John exhales lazily out the window, a gauzy plume of tar that dissipates in the rising, falling, passing wind. The county’s plains stream past them, hills and valleys and the forests that line the edges of his vision. The yellowed grass blurs at the edges by the speed in which they approach John’s bunker. The sky is split wide open by the glow of the sun. Though he knows they revolve from miles and _miles_ away, John flicks the butt of their cigarette skyward, like it’ll float past the clouds, past the atmosphere, to shrivel and burn in the endless cold. The expression on his face is thoughtful when he finally looks towards Nick. The smile creasing his mouth is all wrong, though; it’s too chiding, too sure, and it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

     “Not this time, Nick.”


End file.
